Carlos Vives: "Music has taught me to be proud of everything I am"

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Carlos Vives (Santa Marta, Colombia, 1961) wears his smile like a flag.

He gets excited when he talks about his new album,

the fifteenth of his career.

His eyes shine when he exposes the result: the 14 new songs that might seem like unlikely collaborations - from Camilo, through Ricky Martín, to Fito Páez - but that's just before listening to them.

His words evidence an expansive and unprecedented exploration that has led him to make modern music based on percussive and melodic sounds from ancient Colombia.

With a packed agenda, he will step on various stages to meet the Spanish public again.

He will begin playing at the

(July 15) to continue at the

(July 16) and

(July 19), to finish in Madrid, at

(July 28).

In this interview, he takes some time to travel to his past, when he remembers that as a child he liked to write "one or another line", and that he even dedicated poems to his girlfriends, but he never thought he would compose songs.

Today he writes about love, but also about the great problems of the world, such as lack of communication.

"We have not understood that we are diverse and that if we do not understand each other it is very difficult to recognize each other," she says.

I started working on my music knowing that I was not going to make folklore.

He understood that folklore could not be recorded.

There is nothing new in music because everything has folk origins: blues, hippie hop... Understanding that was key for me because I didn't want to do folklore, I wanted to invent my pop and do my rock and roll based on my tradition of my roots.

I chose to work on vallenatos, which seem like very folk music from a very specific place.

But this taught me to understand a dimension of diversity, of everything we are.

Vallenato ended up being the son of cumbia and cumbia married jazz and what we in Colombia call

.

Everything of ours is already a fusion.

For this reason, it is not correct to say: "Carlos Vives fused vallenato with hip hop or with rock."

I found my modern sound from my traditional music.

I don't know if I'm getting mixed up and talking like crazy about all this, but in the end what I want to say is that everything is connected.

We are Africa, we are Europe, we are America.

On the new album I have many collaborations.

My way of collaborating is not to do what the invited person does, but to see how I connect from my own.

I did it with Alejandro [Sanz] in the first volume.

Here I have a song with Ricky [Martin] that connects two parts of the Caribbean.

I chose a way of making music that allows me to naturally connect with people.

I can work with Alejandro because our music is from Spain.

I can also do it with hip hop artists because we have African patterns that connect us;

with everything Andean, because we are also an Andean culture.

There is really nothing borrowed, we can connect when there are connections.

When he started all this, did he already have in his head the names of who he wanted to accompany him?

When I started working with this invention it didn't have a name because it came from the vallenatos, but they weren't really traditional vallenatos, they called it Colombian pop.

At first I wasn't invited much to sing with artists.

But later we showed that our path was not simply folkloric, but that we were making a modern sound from our roots and there were already ways to connect, that people invited me to sing with them and we understood that we had touched hearts beyond our house. In the song Babel, which he sings with Fito Páez, he says

When was the last time you felt that, as humanity, the train was leaving us again? I come from a place where people live leaving the train because nobody wants to understand each other.

We have not understood that we are diverse and that if we do not understand each other it is very difficult to recognize each other.

We have lived excluded and excluding, without really understanding all that we are, all that we need.

That is in politics, in everything.

I think that historically we have had great opportunities and the train has left us. In this increasingly globalized world but in which it is often so difficult to understand the differences, what role should music play? Music has played a role with me and It is precisely to understand the country in which I live and that recognizing ourselves is important.

In music we have managed to unite in our differences.

That's why,

in music you can't talk about fusion, we already are fusion.

The cumbia, the vallenatos, are the reflection that pre-Hispanic cultures have joined with Spain.

Spanish metrics reached pre-Hispanic music, then Africa from different sources and Lebanese emigration, and that is how we have painted our own.

It has a special mix flavor.

It is easy to realize that we have achieved it with music and not with politics.

Music shows you what we really should be, why don't we do it in real life? In song

It is easy to realize that we have achieved it with music and not with politics.

Music shows you what we really should be, why don't we do it in real life? In song

It is easy to realize that we have achieved it with music and not with politics.

Music shows you what we really should be, why don't we do it in real life? In song

You say you want to sing to your land because you owe it a lot and haven't given it anything.

However, he is considered a pioneer of the new Colombian and Latin American sound.

Isn't that a contradiction? It may be a contradiction.

I think I have been faithful to that feeling of my nationality and my commitment to my country.

But I feel that from Colombia they take, take, take and give little.

And I have to sink with everyone.

I do, I think I have become more aware in recent years about what a Colombian should do if he wants his country to be better.

In an interview he stated: "Latinos are a culture that historically do not feel proud of anything that is ours."

Why do you believe this? Because it happened to us like this, it was a matter of education.

When you work with music, you begin to discover everything that we are.

You begin to feel proud of many things and to understand the times, the history, the things that happened to us.

But also understand that time passes and that it is time to change many of those things.

Music has taught me to be proud of everything I am.

I think it's time to value everything we have.

We inherit very beautiful things that help us to look forward. At the beginning of your career, you did not write the lyrics, you were an actor who sang songs written by others when.

When did you realize that you were capable of composing? I was always a poet.

As a child I liked to write a line or two, but I never thought I was going to compose songs.

I wrote love poems to my girlfriends.

When I made my musical proposal I started singing traditional music by old composers.

After that first album I knew I had to make new songs.

The path we had chosen required making songs different from the words of the time, from rock or from the music that was composed.

None of those worked for me because we had found a new way to do it.

There were people who told me: "Sit down and don't get up from there until you have something written".

And I asked: "How do you write?".

Perhaps, the first song that I dared to record that I had written was

, which became an incredible anthem for us.

A simple song but that already sounded different from the ones that were out there.

I already knew what he wanted to say: there were things from those old-school composers that stayed with me, that I wanted to keep and others that he had to invent.

This new album has everything, including a tribute to Shakira through

What did you rediscover on this trip to Barranquilla and the roots of the singer? Barranquilla for us became a symbol of culture.

It's a great musical school and Shakira has a lot to do with it.

Because she was born there and that city shapes her, in addition to its Arab culture and everything we know, which has her style.

Knowing Barranquilla is understanding Shakira.

Knowing Shakira is understanding the woman from Barranquilla.

For me, it was important in

have a tribute to her and through her, to the Barranquilla woman and to that city that is strategically very important for Colombia.

Today Shakira is going through a difficult time on a personal level.

Does she plan to meet him taking advantage of the fact that she is in Spain?

I have sent her, of course, one or another message of encouragement to see if she can get a smile out of them.

But in these difficult times, people always seek to be alone, calm, have time for themselves, to think about the things that happen.

I think what a friend can do is accompany her in silence.

Heart problems are difficult and when there are children even more so.

I send her the best energy, what I want is for her to be happy because she deserves it.

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